Parallel Rivers Read online

  Anyway, I’ve answered my desert island question. I’ve let every thing but one go.

  And she’s in Los Angeles, my beauty. Shipped across the ocean, through the Panama Canal, she waits for me on the unmarred tiles, no doubt, of a bright showroom. Driven there by a dockside lout who has been bonded, washed, and issued clean white coveralls for the purpose. The one I’ve waited for all my life, the one I promised myself. All that hassle of acquiring papers and insurance. She’s taken my savings. Every night for the past week a crowd has gathered outside the showroom to ogle her through the plate windows. A yellow Lamborghini Diablo. The email announcing her arrival was shocking. In fact my ticker may give out when I set eyes on her, or when I first ease the clutch, or when we’re released on the highway.

  The Greyhound is crossing a bridge. An inbound tug draws a log boom over the water below. The logs must be white from last night’s snow. Our wheels rattle across the bridge, the headrest vibrates, the black and white logs slide away. Disbelief. I grip both armrests. It happens. The motors turn the world. Yes. That glorious day in Hattiesburg I was awarded tenure, everything in the sky in shades of red. I parked my Lotus at Tong’s Groceteria, bought six Mars bars from Mrs Tong, ate five before reaching home. Imogen’s away north, visiting her folks, I confided to my neighbour, a foxy blonde from Yazoo City. Don’t celebrate alone! she said. We got together to cook shrimp creole, and before we’d done laughing that night we were on cloud nine, blind as bats, fucked out. Yes. Last time I saw Imogen was a few years ago at the opening of her show Tapestries. We embraced with some warmth between two enormous hangings, silk on cotton canvas: one an abstract cellular habitation, like a honeycomb, in nacreous blue, the other the nose and cockpit of a jet in flight. The pilot — face composed, Imogen told me, of a million yellow microchips — was waving through his plexi-dome at the blue tapestry across the gallery.

  Doesn’t look friendly, I said.

  No, said Imogen. It’s bye-bye to all things bright and beautiful.

  We toasted. The glitter of spray mingled above our champagne glasses. I’m awkward, off balance. I recall gritting my teeth, waiting for the anxiety to recede.

  I’m still waiting. Night before I left on this trip I took a cab through town, picked myself a young desperate redhead to take home. Soon as we got in the door she began to remove her clothes. I looked at her white body, lit blue from the TV, and held up my hand to get her attention, only to be distracted by the blue veins below my knuckles.

  It’s freezing, she complained. You ever turn up the heat in this house? Her forehead furrowed in concentration.

  I peered through the curtains at the slanting rain, the sturdy sold sign in the lawn, the idling car in the driveway across the street. Fifty-seven Chevy.

  Hello-o!

  I just stood there, showing her my back, and watched that old Chevy fill the piss-grey night with smoke.

  For a while now I’ve tried to see only shapes and lines. That’s what you learn from an abstract artist. Anyway, it doesn’t suit me to speculate about what’s inside or underneath, to think deeply about the things I imagine or feel. From the bus, I stare at a house on a hill, a tall old mansion with a spire and two gables, a tiny windowed observatory atop its cedar roof. Then there’s a bare tree hung with black garbage bags. Later, a long narrow inlet by the near shore of which floats a small log boom; an orange winch on a ruined deck is hooked to a blue motor with a rusty chimney.

  One day last September, carrying home my angelfish, I was hit by a Ford in the school zone on Baxter. Just a glancing blow, but the bag punctured and the driver, jumping from his car, thinks I’m bleeding. The bell rings, children catapult from the school doors, red-vested patrol kids take position at the crossing, and between my fingers the fish flip-flop against the sides of the ruptured bag. I wave away all help and at home float the collapsed bag in the aquarium, gingerly separate the sides. Three striped discs slice into the water, two remain static. Suspended, they gradually sink toward the gravel bed. But the third revives, swims a circle, its wafer-body tilted, gills working, fins flashing silver. I breathe gently on the glass, rub at the mist, remove my wet coat.

  Cluttered stacks, warehouses, the cement and corrugated iron of a shutdown mill wrapped in its own shadows. A boy wearing a white windbreaker peering from a motionless railcar. I twist round in my seat to hold the scene in place. But the boy turns out to be a length of wide masking tape, its unattached end fluttering in the open freight door. Long after the rails and the car have passed from sight I can’t breathe properly. I’m sure I’ll collapse. Such a pain in my shoulder. Not now. Not yet. I go to the back of the bus, to the toilet, lock the door behind me, and sit down. A pine tree burns in a corner, coloured boxes beneath hanging tinsel, the steel bands tighten round my chest, and somewhere, I realize, is wild with people. I feel horny, as on a high ledge you comprehend down. Yes. A calm sunny day in Toronto, out of nowhere. An old Pontiac, radio blaring, bounces off the curb in front of me, swerves and crashes into the fence. I glance back at Sandra, plump and exposed in her red bikini.

  When I find my seat again, I feel depleted. People on the bus seem lost, pitiful. Across the aisle is a blonde woman in a man’s arms. Popcorn will not be available tonight, the redhead sang out. Maybe I should’ve said something kind to her, something like: This means a lot to me, you know, just being close to a young woman. The blonde woman reminds me of the Yazoo City blonde. She toys with an orange, picks the star tab from the navel. The flesh underneath is pure white. She peels the rind. The pith comes off like lace edging. The segments she arranges in a circle on a magazine. Sharp citrus. Clockwise, beginning at one, she consumes the orange hour by hour as we zoom down the highway, the aisle full of young kids, I don’t know, it’s crazy, the blonde with the orange. You just sit here, you old shit, sit here and let this happen, you’re good for that much. Get your thoughts on track. Count your children. Five. Count your grandchildren. Three. Fifteen miles to Coos Bay, Oregon. All that counts.

  When the bus stops I’m definitely hungry. Outside the coffee bar three boys kick a can back and forth on the sidewalk.

  One blocks my way. “You a detective?”

  “Little man,” another says.

  The boys stand shoulder to shoulder. The one who’s not yet spoken lifts the can with his toe, tosses it across the road. “Give us some money.”

  I push through, into the coffee shop, buy a packet of donuts. Cars I’ve owned. Twenty-six. Makes? Let me list them. Chromed and finny, in all the colours of salt water tropicals, but bottom feeders every last one, noses in the dust. Outside with my donuts and quickly past the boys, I know the beauty that awaits me will be different; together we’ll soar into the near sound of foghorns, one bleating, one low and mournful, the kids playing behind me now, against the sky’s winter glare. My son died last year. I can smell the ebbing tide, the drying mud flats. Clarence. The dry donuts crumble easily, releasing a powdery smell. One midsummer day, I woke from a doze in the sunshine and my white Spider skidded gracefully sideways into the intersection. Mouth full of sweet dough, the steel binds me, but gently, my body expands to engulf the parking lot, two dogs meet at the far fence, the horns blow simultaneously, trees turn negative along the boulevard. The boys race between the bus and the coffee shop. The passengers clutch their styrofoam cups. I push against small hedges and fences. The passengers will last forever, recorded on the surface of my skin. I’ll be the first of us to die. Saliva dribbles and a stream appears in the stark backyard over there. The white Spider enfolds my head in a crystallized web, silver crosshatching. Absolute clarity: summer trees, sky, figures running on a crazy path.

  Across the road and down a bit from the bus depot I hit the tracks where the tangy wind is blowing pretty hard and can’t believe how good it feels to walk away from the bus. Beyond the beach houses I can see the Pacific, grey but kind of luminous. The sky’s like that, too. Tiny boats halfway to the horizon, in a line like pearls on a necklace, every pearl a dull pain
, but it feels great, shells on the ties crunching.

  One night, soon after Imogen left me, I dreamt our beach house was falling. A small hole appeared in the wall above my bed, a hand jutted out and pale fingers took hold of my hair. My skull crunched as I was pulled through into the basement room where a child sat on the tiny cane-backed chair. I can still feel the drag. The bands tighten, two of them. Clarence will tell me exactly when to take a pill to open my heart.

  I’ve an idea the world’s purifying itself.

  There’s a sandpiper chittering on the ground ahead, one wing extended, flailing. She can’t fool me: this is a healthy bird faking, taunting me to follow. Allows me close, then flies a couple of arm-spans north. Gold and milk coffee and whipped cream. Allows me close again, quick-stilts away, straight as the rails north. What I can’t understand is all this trouble over nothing. The broken wing routine, to lead predators away from eggs on the ground, is for springtime, nesting season. It’s winter, near enough, pretty cold anyhow; yesterday it snowed. Only the two of us now. The sandpiper increasing her flight distance each take-off. Me on my dad’s lap, observing everything, everything. When he sets his cigarette on the crowded ashtray between the salt and pepper shakers, it rolls onto the table and the wood slowly darkens under the glow. He pours himself a bourbon, spills a little on the smouldering cigarette, picks up my hand again. Merry Christmas, son. Merry Christmas. A woman’s metallic voice from another room. My mother asking? saying? yelling? Sandpiper propels herself north again, forgetting to drag her wing this time. Gulls crying over the water. Is she afraid for me or is it all for her own sake? This doesn’t make sense. She could vanish quicker than I can blink. Perhaps she’s not leading me, she’s just going somewhere. Her frequent landings mean something I’ll never guess.

  Peet-weet-weet!

  My father died of a heart attack when he was fifty-six. I’ll follow the sandpiper and the rails tie after tie. Doesn’t want to fly, maybe, but I’m pushing her on? Can’t bring herself to leave me completely? I give up. She could lift and turn any direction she chose. I give up.

  Late one winter’s night, not long after my dad died, I was bounced from a downtown bar, bitterly cold, no cash, couldn’t remember where I’d parked the car. I walked across the river to a girlfriend’s. Didn’t want to, not really, didn’t want to see anyone. I just needed a place to go. On the bridge a pretty woman in a long skirt hugged a shawl round her, fumbled a cigarette, her hands shaking so badly that she couldn’t get it lit. The shawl — vibrant yellow with lurex threads — rippled as I approached, walked quickly past, kept going to the end of the bridge, where I turned in time to see the fabric swoop, catch the bridge lights, fold in on itself, and vanish into the dark. The woman climbed the metal railing. A van gained the bridge from the city side.

  Come on, come on.

  A not-so-amazing thing happens: the clouds blow away, the sun comes out, and when I look the sandpiper has gone, waves rattle stones on the beach, every breath is a little groan, and we’re on the highway again, winding the scenery by, the blonde asleep in the arms of the man beside her.

  “Sweetheart, look,” he says.

  “Mmm,” she says, nuzzling awake. “O, honey, what a beautiful sky, did you ever see such a blue? Did you?”

  KEYPUNCH

  MY FRIEND NAOMI FRECHETTE RENTS THE lower floor of a tumbledown mansion near the Bay Street Bridge. If it were not for the unclipped laurel hedge she would have a fine view of Selkirk Water beyond the Bamfield Park treetops. Her place is so damp and dark that she’s troubled with claustrophobia. Sometimes halfway through cooking breakfast she has to quickly leave the house. I’ve told her to move. Told her what it’s like living on the seventeenth floor of a Calgary highrise.

  We met two years ago, Naomi and I, at a lecture on pre-menstrual syndrome (“Rhythm & Blues” — causes and nutritional support) at the Victoria Naturopathic Clinic. Besides other interesting facts — such as if a woman can feel good, really good about herself just before her period, she can get high, and over-ripe bananas and fresh orange juice and exercise may ease cramps — we learned that we were of the same body type, and both addicted to caffeine. We changed our diets for a while, swore off grain, alcohol, sugar, dill pickles, and even coffee. I loaded my fruit basket with nasty black bananas. Though Naomi really does have the most awful cramps, headaches, depression, bleeding — far worse than any symptoms I can come up with — she insists she’s used to dealing with the four or five days of misery each month, says she never thinks about it, avoids calendars like the plague.

  Once, several months ago, she woke up and even before opening her eyes felt shut in, trapped, desperate. The birds were singing madly. She dressed as fast as she could and fled the house, letting the door bang in her hurry to escape. That early spring morning she came upon a one-legged pigeon that couldn’t fly. A little farther on she saw a man carrying a suitcase walking along the path through the wooded park. The floodlights from the sawmill across the water lit the trail between the widely spaced evergreens. The sun had not yet risen, the sky above the mill showed pink-streaked clouds, and the man, deep in thought, hadn’t seen her — not surprising since she stood in the trees. He was handsome, slender, yet well made. Late twenties, a little younger than Naomi. She found him attractive. She especially liked his high forehead and straight flaxen hair. He had an engaging vacant look; he needed a shave; obviously he lived alone.

  Every day for a week, Naomi set her alarm for five am and woke feeling apprehensive. Out at dawn, hair tightly knotted at the nape of her neck, she waited through seven sunrises in the spiraea thicket beside the path on which she’d seen the one-legged bird. By the end of the week she was on familiar terms with a family of wrens living in an old hornet’s nest suspended from the branch of a nearby oak, but she did not see the pigeon. However, one day when she was waiting for the bus, she saw the man again. He was standing across the street in front of a billboard, right between the eyes of a fresh-looking boy of about seven who, grinning into the advertiser’s camera, had just bitten into a pear. On impulse she crossed the street and walked up to the billboard. The pear shone unnaturally green in the child’s lowered hands; the man’s shirt was unbuttoned to the waist, an affectation she usually found unappealing. She blushed at him, then walked on, a silly smile at her lips. She felt excited. His pale, hairless chest, she told me, was almost a girl’s. She forgot her claustrophobia. She stopped cooking. She ate stacks of toast with marmalade, and not only for breakfast. She telephoned me each time she saw him on the street. She always smiled at him; I could tell from the tone of her voice the times when he reciprocated.

  One Sunday evening, at my suggestion, she followed him to see where he lived, then she called me to come help. It was an old house divided into suites. I did the cop work, rang every bell, pretending to be lost, flirted my way into his life, and then ran down the steps back to Naomi.

  “His name’s Brian Hubner! And it’s not a suitcase, it’s a saxophone.”

  Shoulders back, she threw her chest out, stuck out her ass, and strolled away, not looking at me or at the house.

  “You owe me a coffee!” I shouted.

  She began to neglect her caseload. She wore only green clothes, called me almost every day, and she confessed to a new addiction to TV sports, finding herself brought to tears by telecasts of solo events, especially gymnastics. I felt touched by her confidences, but embarrassed. I answered the phone less frequently, then not at all. I stopped seeing her.

  But Brian Hubner fascinated me. He was utterly self-absorbed and compelling. I arranged our first meeting in the park, dropped the name of the place I worked. I didn’t mean to, but I engineered the coincidence that would nail our intimacy. I got to know him well.

  After the accident, when I visited him in hospital, I told him I was responsible for what had happened.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with you. The Indian made a mistake. He should’ve taken up
the slack in the cable before cutting the rope.”

  “It was me,” I said. “Make no mistake.”

  He answered with a smirk. “Get out.”

  “You know who puts broken glass in your mailbox? Not your slut from Vancouver. It’s me, Brian. I just don’t want you to misinterpret the world.” A nurse at the open ward door looked on. I could tell she was steeling herself to interfere. “Just ditch me, Brian, just try it. We’re stuck with each other.”

  “You make me sick,” he said. “You’re like a lost dog.”

  Brian was accustomed, nearly every morning, to make espresso and drink it from his Marilyn Monroe cup. He ate Cheerios from it for lunch. At night, he’d fill the cup with ice cream and, using a tiny silver spoon, eat the dessert very slowly. He insisted on having the cup with him in hospital. I have told him that neurosis leads to psychosis, but really I like to think of him continuing these pathetic rituals.

  Pursing his lips to the tenor sax mouthpiece, he turns his back on the absurdly thin woman in green on the sidewalk outside his window, stares into the pink cup before blowing his wild jazz. The eerie wind-sound spooks me. He drains the melted ice cream, spins the cup so the beauty spot on the bottom appears in the reflection of his right cheek, and says, “You and me, Marilyn.”

  In hospital, he talked about Vancouver, the band, heroin, the fuck-up, and about the first morning in his new place in Victoria, clean, that strange magic high-ceilinged apartment liquid with rain.

  He opens his cases, lifts the instruments in turn, wipes smudges from the brass and silver, and plays. He names each horn before gently replacing it. When the music stops we look at a fly on the window frame. We tour in silence the bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen, noting an occasional dent in the plaster walls. We curl up on the bedroom floor between the wall and a large tea crate full of linen. “It is obvious,” he tells me, “it is clear that I can’t play a note without you.”